Biarritz v Ulster

[Alister Scott]

Can't believe there were so many knowlegeable souls who thought we would win today. A little knowledge is obviously a dangerous thing

Perhaps, but not nearly as irritating as some half-witted tw@t with 20/20 hindsight & a big mouth. Go and watch football

The usual grief and whining but those comments made during the game are forgivable.

Just a couple of points. The guys lost focus when they went 2 scores behind. We started playing a bit "headless" and forgot that keeping them to 4 points was just as important as seeking a losing bonus point. Would have liked to see them still trying to play the pattern of the 1st half and have faith that things would happen. Easier said than done of course - what do you think baldeagle?

When the 3rd try was scored there was no evidence from anyone that there was a need to fight like feck to keep out a 4th and that goes for the coaching staff as much as the players.

Some stick on here for Piennar & Humphreys - harsh is all I am prepared to say.

Place kicking - a regular theme - Piennar pulls the ball left even with his good kicks. Call me an expert but this makes him very susceptible to missing from the right side in particular.

Defeat - 1st of the season and not pleasant but no reason to throw the toys out of the pram. Every chance to get back on the horse next week in Edinburgh get the game back together and get ready to tonk Bath on 12th December. The group is almost certainly gone but we can still get a 2nd place finish.

May sound defeatist but the best that is likely to give is a trip to one of Biarritz, Toulouse or Leicester. A run at the Amlin might do us more good.

DL - sorry you missed the best part of our performance, we were good in the first half, BUT - schoolboy error I'm afraid, kick offs are always in local time. No point blaming the Ulster website - everywhere would have said the same thing.

Not far from the mark, BAGOA - but getting a bonus point ourselves might possibly be more important than preventing them getting one in the long term - pity we achieved neither.

Although BBC had kick-off time listed as 15.00

[Big-al]

Not a happy bunny after that crap in the 2nd half.

The players should be ashamed of themselves

[notj]

The players gave everything they had. They don't deserve to be completely panned. It was an education today, but I believe we will come back all the stronger for it. Diack, Best, Ferris, McIlwaine all had very good games.

It takes time to learn the mentality of winning in this competition because it a completely different level to the ML. Are we going to cry and stamp our feet when we don't enjoy instant success? Or are we going to realise that setbacks happen but we're still moving forwards- not backwards

I still believe we can push on into the Amlin from this group. Biarritz will surely take 10 from Aironi though.

[backawaygoonahead]

Thats because we are good enough for once to win. We just didnt.

Need to keep our form in the league now, and pump bath at home, to give us a good chance of winning away at the rec.

Spot on - a bad beating in the end, but not the end of the world. No amount of bleating from "MR Angry of Ulster" as we are seeing at present on a couple of threads will make it better or worse. Just seems odd to me that so many are ready to rip into the guys they claim to support. A bit of through thick & thin seems appropriate.

Just because we have spend a few quid doesn't prepare you to go to places like BO or Toulouse or plenty of other places and win. We are a new team - not a Munster team who had learned the hard way about winning in England & France.

It all takes time, lessons need to be learned - today we got a lesson.

[aarons]

It all takes time, lessons need to be learned - today we got a lesson.

i'm not going to slate the team for anything other than not having the common sense to prioritise not letting biarritz score 4 tries when the game was lost. surely such knowledge can be gained by simply reading the tournament website?

[backawaygoonahead]

It all takes time, lessons need to be learned - today we got a lesson.

i'm not going to slate the team for anything other than not having the common sense to prioritise not letting biarritz score 4 tries when the game was lost. surely such knowledge can be gained by simply reading the tournament website?

No argument from me on that one sir. In fact I said the same thing with a different colection of words earlier.

[Shan]

Well what can you say. At half time I thought this game was going as I had expected it to with a close encounter which would ultimately end in a small margin victory for Biarritz. Then the second half all went wrong for Ulster. You have to give credit to Biarritz as they took their opportunities very well. Sure they were helped by some disappointing Ulster defence but I think you could see their experience too. Yachvili was excellent as usual and really once he is performing and allowed to perform you are always in trouble. He makes things look very easy and always seems to be in control.

I think if Ulster had shown better composure and handling in the first half when they were doing well they could have scored a try or two and it would have ended much closer.

[Snipe Watson]

Our lack of accuracy was always going to bit us in the ass and that was today.

The problem was in the first half not the second as some say. Failure to turn pressure and dominance into points will always be fatal playing against a quality side away from home. Had we opened the 10-15 point margin in the first 40 all the pressure would have shifted and it would have been entirely different.

[Dublin4]

Having really enjoyed our win at Sarries and the boggers' achievements at Thomond, I was looking forward to Ulster getting a bonus point in defeat at least at Biarritz. Instead there was major disappointment.
Your second half was woeful and just not at the level required. I expected more from your SA imports and in my opinion the IRFU and you are getting poor value for the investment. Too many missed tackles and poor decision making.
I don't see any progression.

The least you must do is aim to get a convincing harvest of points from the back to back with Bath and go for second place hoping to get into the QFs that way.

By the way thanks for Isaac Boss, he's a super guy to have competing for the 9 jersey.

[ColinM]

I expected more from your SA imports and in my opinion the IRFU and you are getting poor value for the investment.

First part of that is fair enough, second part is a bit on the harsh side, too early to make such calls. Adding a couple of forwards and a number 9 does not a new team make. The new imports have been responsible for a good number of our ML points to date ie points we wouldnt have held onto last year and they are raising the bar for our own homegrown players a number of which have played better this year than in other years.

Fair point on Boss, good player & great character to have around any squad

[Cornerfleg]

Our lack of accuracy was always going to bit us in the ass and that was today.

The problem was in the first half not the second as some say. Failure to turn pressure and dominance into points will always be fatal playing against a quality side away from home. Had we opened the 10-15 point margin in the first 40 all the pressure would have shifted and it would have been entirely different.

None other than Harry Williams used to go on and on about skills breaking down under pressure. That's our downfall - basic skills desert us and we look just very ordinary when a good team puts on the heat. knock ons, restarts, drops, bad passes, aimless kicks you name it. In reality how many would Munster or Leinster have been up by by half time. Hypothetical ... maybe but deep down we know the answer would be a brave few more than 3!

It's not a day to pan the players, just cos we feel humbled - we got our asses handed to us by and ordinary team who could execute their minimnal game plan well under pressure. It's not the players fault if they are not good enough. I think we fans need to lower our expectations of the team and get behind them on a realistic level.

Twas interesting to see Edinburgh get beaten after playing great rugby - a thread a while back was saying they'd rather Ulster won playing ugly than get beat playing like Edinburgh. Mmmmmmmm I'm now not a great fan of getting beaten playing ugly.

[darkside lightside]

Your second half was woeful and just not at the level required. I expected more from your SA imports and in my opinion the IRFU and you are getting poor value for the investment. Too many missed tackles and poor decision making.
I don't see any progression.

it certainly wasn't at the level required, and neither the SA lads nor any of their Irish team-mates acquitted themselves well - like someone else says, it's much too early to be judging the value of the investment. In fact they have already had a positive impact in earlier games this seasons, and Muller in particular has put in a few big performances from the front.

I think actually that this match showed up a bit of complacency - if I had a tenner for every time I heard a player, member of management, or local hack talking about 'Ulster unbeaten record..blah blah..only one in Europe' in the last few weeks I'd be posting this from the presidential suite at the Ritz in Paris.. After a phoney war period, this was a bit of a welcome to the new guys to real European rugby, where playing average, inaccurate rugby isn't enough to scratch your way to narrow victories - as it was against Aironi and Glasgow..

Now is the time to stop talking about how good we can be, and start actually playing like it - start winning a few restarts, stop dropping the focking ball every couple of passes, and getting over the blasted line when we're camped on it...

[jackthelad]

The team hasn't gelled all season. They haven't had a settled side. Some of the guys are very inexperienced. There appears to be no coherent defensive strategy when under pressure. There appears to be a distinct lack of skills. We all know Trimble has hands like feet under a high ball but his drops were laughable. Is this the now familiar mid-October collapse? Probably not. Biarritz look set now but they won't win the ERC. Very few teams will roll over like Ulster. No discernible strategy anywhere other than brute force. I think we just have to put it down to a bad day at the office and move on. We could and should have been 15 - 20 points up at half time. Lack of composure, skills collapsing, lack of defensive pattern and lack of luck and a few iffy reffing calls and by such margins do we grab a backscuttling from a possibly decent result.

[Setanta]

I thought everyone played really well in the first half and individually reasonably well in the second apart from a couple of errors from the new young fella but he's got to learn. The worst one was not staying out for his own man, which let in the first try. Second half we were playing into the wind, (why? - apparerntly we won the toss!) the referee gave a few very funny decisions and we went onto the back foot big time. The key thing now is will we learn from the setback and get back up or is that the end of the season?

[fuzzylogic]

well at least 3 of us called the result correct in the poll, however I see some smart ass has only just voted today . . . . tommy tanker!